by Balogh, Mary
“About Mrs. Bennington, yes,” he said.
“She is the youngest of my brother’s children,” she told him. “She was always sweet and quiet, but a happy girl, I thought. She was on the brink of making her come-out into society when her father died and the discovery was made that he had never been legally married to her mother. She seemed to be the one who took the blow the best. She remained quiet and sweet. But her happiness was gone. And actually she became quieter than she had been—withdrawn and insistent upon being left to live her life her own way. We were all worried. My heart ached for her with that helpless feeling one gets when one wants desperately to help while knowing that all one’s efforts to do so are not wanted and are therefore useless.”
The story of her life.
“Ah, but she would have known herself loved,” he said. “That is invaluable in itself, ma’am.”
He was a kind young man, she thought. Some young lady was going to be very fortunate when he decided to settle down.
“And then this year she met Gil Bennington,” she told him, “and married him without a word to her family—except her brother, who was the sole family member at her wedding. None of us were quite easy in our minds about it, for he is a taciturn, stern, dour man, very military in his bearing. But it became clear to us at the custody hearing and afterward that he loves his daughter to distraction and probably—very probably—Abigail too. And she glows with happiness, though she is as quiet and reserved as ever. There is a certain look about two people in love, Mr. Sawyer.”
Matilda was surprised to realize that they were still waltzing, surrounded by other couples. She had forgotten her fear of tying her feet in knots.
“She is my half sister–in-law,” he said. “If there is such a relationship.”
“Your father loves you and your sisters no whit the less for the fact that he also loves his natural son,” she told him. “Love is not a finite thing to be equally apportioned among a limited number of people. It is infinite and can be spread to encompass the whole world without losing one iota of its force. And goodness, just listen to me. If you wish for life advice, come to Aunt Matilda. Tell all your friends.”
He laughed. “It is a jolt to the system, you know,” he said, “to discover at the age of twenty-two that one has a thirty-four-year-old brother. And now I will not rest until I have met him. And Mrs. Bennington. And Katy.”
Matilda smiled. How she liked this young man. Under other circumstances he might have been hers. But no. What a stupid, ridiculous thought. He was the son of Charles and his late wife.
“When you and my father knew each other as young people,” he said, “were you in love, Lady Matilda? And what an impertinent question that is. Do please ignore it.”
She continued to smile at him as Charles and Barbara danced by, laughing over something one of them had said.
“We were both very young,” she told him. “Just twenty. Whatever was between us, Mr. Sawyer, was over long before your father met your mother. I saw very little of him during the years of their marriage, and even that little was from afar. We never spoke. There was never anything between us.”
“Except when you were very young,” he said. “As though young love is foolish and not to be taken at all seriously. I am twenty-two, Lady Matilda. Only two years older than my father was then. I know I am young. I know it will be years before I acquire any serious sort of wisdom. But the feelings of the young ought not to be dismissed or made light of. They are very real. I am sorry that something happened—and I am not going to ask you what it was—to separate you and my father. I like you.”
Matilda smiled and blinked her eyes rapidly. Was it because of something to do with life after the age of fifty-five that she was becoming a watering pot these days?
“Thank you,” she said. “It was not your father’s fault, you know. It was mine. But it is also ancient history. Very ancient.”
They lapsed into a not-uncomfortable silence for what remained of the waltz. How lovely it felt to be liked, Matilda thought in some surprise. One tended to imagine sometimes that only being loved was of any significance. But there was something enormously touching, something genuine, about being told that one was liked. By a young man who had no reason to feel anything at all for one.
Charles’s son.
After the dance was over and while the orchestra took a break they all indulged themselves with the strawberries with clotted cream for which Vauxhall Gardens was famous. And then Jane suggested a walk, something they all agreed they needed after feasting upon such rich foods. Besides, during the darkness of evening there was about Vauxhall a beauty that beckoned one beyond just the area around the boxes.
They all set off together, Mr. Sawyer and Estelle leading the way along the broad, tree-lined avenue, well illumined by the light from the colored lanterns, Charles and Matilda bringing up the rear “like a couple of conscientious chaperons,” Charles remarked.
“However,” he added a minute or two later, “I believe it is to Barbara that the Marquess of Dorchester entrusted Lady Estelle’s care this evening. That leaves us free of all responsibility, Matilda.”
For some reason his words left her feeling breathless.
The avenue was crowded with revelers. It was difficult for a group of eight to remain together. But she and Charles did not need to try. Both his daughters were with their husbands. Estelle was under the care of one of them and being escorted by surely a very respectable young man.
How lovely, Matilda thought, to be without responsibility and walking alone with a man in the crowd.
As she had been with the same man in the same venue thirty-six years ago.
Seven
Thirty-six years ago they had walked this avenue with a group of other young people. Oddly—or perhaps not so strangely considering how long ago it had been—Charles could not recall who any of the others had been, though he thought Humphrey had been there. The parents of one of the young ladies had chaperoned them, but they had been a cheerfully careless pair and had enjoyed the pleasures of Vauxhall on their own account without keeping too close an eye upon their charges, a fact that had delighted those charges.
Charles and Matilda had turned off onto a side path, narrower than the main avenue, more thickly enclosed by trees, more sparsely lit by lanterns, and close to being deserted. They had been able to walk side by side, but only because each had an arm wrapped about the other’s waist. Her head had come to rest upon his shoulder after a while until, in a small clearing to one side of the path, they had come to a halt and he had kissed her.
He had stopped short of making full love to her, and she had indicated just as he was pulling back that she would not have allowed it anyway. But they had shared a long and passionate embrace before that moment. Afterward, while they were recovering their breath, his forehead against hers, her hands spread over his chest, he had told her again that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. She had said yes, oh yes, oh yes, she wanted to marry him too. She would love him with all her heart forever and ever.
Soon after, they had returned to the main avenue to rejoin their party and begin living happily ever after. Less than a week later he had called upon her father …
“Matilda,” he said now as they walked along the main avenue, “how long did it take you to stop loving me?” For she had loved him. He had doubted it for a long time, when the pain was raw, but no longer.
“About as long as it took you to stop,” she said. “Gil was born the following year.”
“I dealt with my unwanted love in a thoroughly unbridled and immature way,” he said. “I suppose I remained immature long after the age at which most men settle down. Until ten years or so ago, in fact. I did not love Gil’s mother, though I do not want to speak disrespectfully of her. She was not a woman of loose morals. I believe she genuinely thought I loved her and would marry her. She punished me very effectively when she understood that I did not and could not.”
“By keeping you away fro
m your son?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me, then,” she asked him, “that all the behavior for which you became notorious was because of me? Did I hurt you so very badly?”
“I was hurt,” he admitted. “But my behavior was mine to own. You were not responsible for any of that, Matilda.”
“Humphrey always assured me whenever I asked,” she said, “that you were not hurt at all, that you had been lying to me when you told me you loved me, that you were incapable of love just as he was. You were a capital fellow in his estimation. He told me to grow up to the real world and not expect love outside the pages of a book.”
“And you listened and believed?” he said. She had asked her brother about him?
“I did not look for love from any man,” she said.
“Because of me?” he asked.
“No, of course—” She stopped. “Yes. Because of you.”
He drew a slow breath and let it out on an almost audible sigh.
“Your mother treats you poorly, Matilda,” he said. It might seem to be a non sequitur, but it was not. “You gave up love and marriage in order to be treated with impatience and irritability even before strangers? Do you not regret—”
“Regrets are pointless,” she said sharply. “My mother is sometimes impatient with me because I coddle her. I have fully realized it only lately. I have always been so determined to show my love and devotion, to make my life seem meaningful, that I have treated her, at least in recent years, like an old woman rather than as a person of dignity still able to be in charge of her own life. I have been a severe trial to her—as she has been to me. Don’t judge from the outside, Charles. She has her own demons to deal with. She feels guilty for blighting my life. My presence forever at her side and my … fussy behavior are a constant reproach to her. I could have behaved differently all those years ago. I could have fought for myself instead of giving in so meekly to my parents’ fears and commands. I could have married someone else of whom they did approve. Oh, but regrets are pointless, Charles. Must we spoil this most wonderful of wonderful evenings by talking of the past?”
The avenue was crowded. They dodged other revelers and probably annoyed a number of them with their slow pace. The orchestra had resumed its playing, but the music was almost drowned out by the sounds of raised voices and laughter.
Perhaps her mother was not such an ogre, then, Charles thought. Apparently she had a conscience. Perhaps she loved her eldest daughter after all. Probably she did, in fact. And Matilda loved her in return, even though her mother had blighted her life—an interesting choice of words. No, he must not judge. Close human relationships were often a great deal more complex than they seemed to outsiders. His own relationship with his wife, for example, had been far from simple, far from one-faceted. On the whole it had been a decent marriage, even though he had been a wayward husband much of the time and she had told him even before they wed that she had no real interest in men but recognized the necessity of conforming to society’s expectations by marrying him. Yet they had produced three children who had grown into affectionate, sensible adults of whom they had both been proud.
“We will not spoil the evening,” he said. “It is wonderful, is it not?”
He could not be sure in the dim, swaying light of the lanterns, but it looked to him as though her eyes had filled with tears. And how much she had revealed about her feelings!
… this most wonderful of wonderful evenings.
Ah, Matilda.
“Come,” he said, turning her onto a side path just as he had more than thirty years ago. “Let us seek a little more privacy.”
He could not be sure it was the same path. But it did not matter. It was narrow as the other one had been, a little too narrow for two people to walk comfortably side by side. He drew his arm away from hers and encircled her waist with it. Far from showing any outrage or resistance, she set her own arm about him and very briefly rested the side of her head against his shoulder.
Just like last time.
“This is better,” he said. “The noise seems more muted here.”
“Yes,” she said. “Charles—”
“Mmm?” He waited for her to continue.
“Surely this is impossible,” she said.
“This?”
“It surely is,” she said. “Impossible. More than three decades have gone by. I am old.”
“I take exception to that word,” he told her. “For if you are old, then I am older. Three months older, I seem to recall. We are not old, and even if we are, we are not dead. Only in that circumstance would I be forced to agree with you that this is impossible. Though perhaps I would be unable then either to agree or to disagree. I would be dead. We are alive, Matilda.”
“But this sort of thing is for young people,” she protested.
“Slinking into the trees to set our arms about each other’s waist?” he said. “Embracing?”
“Oh, not that,” she said hastily. “It would be most unseemly.”
And she sounded so like a prim, middle-aged spinster that he smiled into the darkness. He loved her primness. But only because there was also her passion. And passion very definitely lurked within her. It had shown itself briefly during their kiss on top of the pagoda. And in some of her looks and words since—this most wonderful of wonderful evenings, for example.
“Most,” he agreed.
“You are laughing at me,” she said.
“Yes.”
She turned her face toward his, though he doubted she could see his laughing eyes. “That is unkind.”
“Is it, my love?” he asked her.
“Charles!” Her voice seemed half agony, half outrage.
“Do you not want me to call you that?” he asked. “My love?”
“Ch-a-a-arles.”
He stopped walking. There was a little open-fronted rain shelter in a small clearing to the right of the path, a bench inside it, a lantern suspended from the branch of a tree before it to illumine the interior. He led her toward it, though he did not sit down with her. He faced her instead and laced his fingers with hers at their sides, as he had done at the pagoda. He could see her face dimly, as she would be able to see his. She was gazing wide-eyed at him.
“That was no answer,” he said. “Do you not understand that is what you are to me—my love?”
“Oh,” she said, “you cannot possibly love me, Charles.”
“I do not see why not,” he said. “And apparently it is possible. I have tested the idea and can find no flaw in it. Do you love me, Matilda?”
He watched her lick her lips, lower her gaze, first to his mouth, then to his neckcloth. “Of course I do,” she said, sounding almost cross.
“You cannot possibly,” he told her, and her eyes shot up to look accusingly into his again.
“I never stopped,” she said. “Do you think I did—or could? I followed all the events of your life from afar and lived for the few glimpses I had of you down the years. I bled a little inside every time I heard something about you that reaffirmed my conviction that I had done the right thing by refusing to have anything more to do with you. The pain dimmed as time passed until there was almost no pain at all. The memories dimmed until they became almost unconscious, lost somewhere in the recesses of my mind. But always, always, I have known that I love you, ridiculous as it seemed to be, ridiculous as it would have seemed to anyone who had ever suspected.”
He had turned very still inside. His love for her must have lain dormant in him for more than half his life, but he had given it almost no thought since a year or so after she had rejected him. He had given her no thought, or almost none. Yet his love must not have completely died—or why had it been revived so easily now in all its intensity? Why was it that after such a brief time he was surer than he had been of anything else in his life that he loved this woman who was his age and looked it and dressed without glamour or obvious allure? Yet to him she seemed the most beautiful woman on eart
h. Why was it he had fallen in love only twice in his life, and with the same woman? It shook him to the core that even though she was the one who had rejected him all those years ago, she had remained true to him ever since. For he knew she must have had numerous chances of marriage to other men, at least during the ten years or so after him.
“Matilda.” He sighed and drew her to him, one arm about her waist, the other about her shoulders. “You put me to shame with your steadfast fidelity.”
“But I am the one who sent you away,” she said.
“For reasons that seemed sound to you at the time and possibly were,” he said. “How can either of us be sure I would not have turned out just as I did even if we had married? I do not believe I would have, but I cannot be certain. Perhaps we needed to wait until we were older. We might have had a very unhappy marriage if we had wed when we were young.”
“And we might not have,” she said, infinite sadness in her voice.
“You said earlier that regrets are pointless,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. “You were right.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
And he kissed her.
She kissed like someone who had never kissed before, with slightly pursed lips and stiffened limbs—even though they had kissed at Kew. But there he had not had his arms about her. Perhaps she felt more threatened this time. He raised his head.
“Put your arms around me,” he said. She had her hands clutched about his upper arms. She tipped her head slightly to one side in a familiar gesture before releasing her hold and sliding one arm beneath his about his waist and wrapping the other about his neck.
“Charles,” she said. “I am no good at this. I will only make a cake of myself.”
“I do not believe there is a manual,” he said. “Or any rules at all, in fact. Just kiss me, my love, and I will kiss you.”
“You ought not to call me that,” she said.
“My love?” he said. “Why not?”
She pursed her lips, looked as though she was about to say something, and changed her mind. “I keep waiting to wake up,” she said at last.